Work-Family Balance

Work- family balance is a term that refers to an individuals perceptions of the

degree to which s/he is experiencing positive relationships between work and family

roles, where the relationships are viewed as compatible and at equilibrium with each

other. Like a fulcrum measuring the daily shifting weights of time and energy allocation

between work and family life, the term, work-family balance, provides a metaphor to

countervail the historical notion that work and family relationships can often be

competing, at odds, and conflicting.

Sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter was one of the first scholars to critique the

prevailing assumption that workplaces and jobs must be designed to separate work from

family demands. She challenged this approach as being socially necessary for employee

effectiveness in carrying out the dual demands of being a worker and being a family

member. She noted that as employing organizations shifted to be more demographically

diverse, these stereotyped views on appropriate work and family relationships needed to

be re-viewed in order to prevent negative processes affecting individuals and groups who

were demographically different from the majority. Women as a growing minority group

in employing organizations were having difficulty rising up the hierarchy and being

accepted as managers as they juggled employment, and caregiving and domestic

demands. These same issues are still relevant to organizational studies today. Most men

and women are juggling competing life demands outside of workplaces that still are

largely designed based on a culture that work is the central role in employees lives, and a

belief that workers should sacrifice family personal roles in order to be successful on the

job.

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 From Work-Family Conflict To Work-Family Enrichment: Competing

Negative and Positive Views

Traditionally, researchers have assumed a win-lose relationship between work

and family and focused on work-family conflict, based on the belief that individuals have

limited time and resources to allocate to their many life roles. Most research relevant to

the notion of work-family balance has been conducted on work-family conflict, which can

be viewed as the opposite of work-family balance.

The construct work-family balance is a more positive way of viewing work-

family relationships. It is consistent with the emergence of a new stream of research

being promulgated by such writers as Greenhaus and Powell on work-family enrichment,

the idea that work and family can also enrich and complement each other. Overall,

research on work-family balance can be characterized as being organized along these

competing positive and negative perspectives.

Work-Family Conflict

The negative perspective on balancing work-family relationships emanates out of

role conflict theory, which Goode noted assumed that having multiple roles is distracting,

depletes resources, and results in role strain and overload. With regard to work family

roles, when employees try to carry these competing demands out while being embedded

in traditional workplaces that are designed to support separation of work and family

demands, they are likely to experience higher work-family role conflict.

Greenhaus and Beutell wrote one of the earliest theoretical articles on work-

family conflict. They defined work-family conflict as a type of inter-role conflict where

work and family roles are incompatible and seen as competing for an individuals time,

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energy, and behaviors on and off the job. Their work built on earlier role theory by

Ebaugh and others who defined a role as involving behavioral expectations associated

with a position in a social structure.

Early research on work and family didnt necessarily differentiate where the role

conflict was occurring, such as whether it was due to an inflexible job (work to family

conflict) or whether it was due to not having back up child care for when a child was sick

(family to work conflict) Later Kossek and Ozeki conducted a meta-analysis reviewing

decades of studies that show that life and job satisfaction for men and women is affected

by the type and direction of these competing role dynamics. Given womens traditional

greater responsibility for caregiving, work to family conflict was found to affect life

satisfaction to a greater degree for women than for men. Job satisfaction for men and

women was equally affected by family to work conflict. Understanding the type,

direction, and source of the conflict can help organizations and managers design

appropriate workplace interventions to support work-family balance.

For example, having to work overtime on a job and being forced to miss a childs

school event is an example of time-based work-to-family conflict. However, being absent

from work because a babysitter did not show up is an example of time-based family- to-

work conflict. For the overtime example, an organization might allow for just in time

worker scheduling to allow those workers with the most interest in overtime to volunteer.

In the other example, managing overtime wouldnt solve the babysitter not showing up.

Helping the employee find back-up care for emergencies or letting them work from home

once in a while in emergencies would.

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 An example of energy-based family-to-work conflict is when an employee is too

tired to work well in the morning because he or she was up all night with an ill spouse.

An example of energy- based work to family conflict is when someone is too tired to cook

dinner or clean the house, because of working too intensely on the job. In order to

promote work- family balance to promote better energy allocation between roles, in the

first example, the firm needs to provide dependent care support or leave from work. In

the second example, the firm might need to increase staffing levels so the workload is

dispersed among more workers, or provide stress management techniques that allow

workers to take breaks.

An example of behavior-based family-to-work conflict is when one is so stressed

from a family demand, that the individual is unable to concentrate at work or exhibits

private emotions such as crying at work that would be more associated with the private

sphere. An example of behavior- based work- to-family conflict is when someone comes

home and yells at ones spouse or kicks ones pet because of anger related to work. In

these cases, interventions to reduce the stress in the particular domain where it is

occurring would result in better work-family balance.

Work-family enrichment. The positive approach to studying work-family balance

emanates from Seibers role accumulation theory which assumes that having multiple life

roles can be psychologically enriching, as long as the roles are ones that the individual

has high identity with, sees of good quality, and reap rewards and life privileges. Under a

role accumulation perspective, a person can achieve balance by being able to regulate and

have greater control over when where and how invest time and energy between work and

family to ensure that they perceive they are accumulating positive outcomes from both

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roles. The more roles one has that provide positive rewards, the better off an individual is,

unless s/he has too much too do from the sum of these roles (causing role overload) or

has too many competing role demands. The assumption is that work and family balance

have instrumental and affective paths. The instrumental path focuses on how positive

skills and behaviors and rewards from one domain (such as income, learning how to

manage people or solve problems) can help one perform better in the other domain. The

affective path focused on the degree to which mood and emotions from one domain can

seep in and positively impact how one feels, acts and behaves in the other domain. So if

someone has a good day at work, s/he comes home and are able to have extra energy and

emotions to allocate to the family. Or if one has a wonderful family life, s/he is able to

bring these positive emotions to work.

A final set of studies focus on the processes of balancing relationships between

work and family. Some writers focus on compensation- how having a better role quality

and higher identity in one domain such as the work role may compensate for lower role

quality and investment in another domain such as family. For example, an individual who

highly identifies with work might invest more in work roles to compensate for a less

fulfilling family life.

Other writers might focus on segmentation and integration processes, the degree

to which individuals have preferences for keeping work and personal roles segmented or

integrated. Job and organizational design can interact with preferences for the enactment

of life roles and management of the work and family boundary. A study by Kossek,

Lautsch, & Eaton on teleworking found that individuals who teleworked and adopted an

integrative boundary management style were likely to experience higher work to family

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conflict but not family to work conflict than individuals who adopted a separation style.

Their study showed that the more the workplace is brought into the home via job and

organizational design, the more likely it increases work-to- family conflict, particularly

for individuals who like to integrate work and family roles (say watching children while

taking a work call).

Cross-over effects is another new area of study: how the work-family balance of

one family member such as a wife or husband may transfer over positive and negative

relationships to the other spouse. For example, if a spouse has a good or bad day at work

the balance of the partner may be affected.

Direction Of Work- Family Interactions, Disciplinary Foci, and Levels of Analysis

It is also important to note that research on work-family balance is grounded in

distinct disciplines that are not well integrated, which influences the direction and content

of studies focus. Besides generally designing research studies as measuring generally

positive or negative outcomes from balancing work and family, writers in the field have

tended to focus on either how work affects family OR how family affects work. This

tendency to assume a particular direction of relationship has ramifications for the

measures and outcomes studies. In several handbooks such as Work and Life Integration

and The Work and Family Handbook, the editors noted that researchers who study how

family demands are affected by work demands often use different measures and focus on

different levels of analysis in assessing work-family relationships then management

scholars who might study how work responsibilities are affected by being a parent or a

spouse.

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 One large cluster of studies focuses on how family demands affect work.

Historically, much of the writing in the management and organizational literature

followed this approach. A general assumption is that the more family and other nonwork

demands and interests an individual has, the more likely work is going to be negative

impacted. For example, researchers in this stream might measure the number of children

an employee has, his or her marital status. They would then link these personal

demographics to the degree to which a person experiences positive work attitudes (e.g.,

commitment, job satisfaction) and work behaviors (e.g., turnover, performance). The

level of analysis tended to be largely individual and focused on the employees personal,

family and work characteristics.

The other directional group of studies examines the different ways work impacts

the family. Writers coming from this approach tend to emanate out of psychology and

sociology and belief that the structure, stresses, and demands of work can make it more

difficult for individuals to fulfill their family responsibilities as well as experiencing job

stress at home. Some people refer to this negative seepage as negative spillover from

work to home.

Writers from this perspective might measure the degree to which inflexible work

hours, lack of supervisor support, job demands and the structure of the workplace,

negatively impact family and personal outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, equal participation

in family and domestic roles, life satisfaction, work-life balance). Here the level of

analysis tended to focus more on workplace, job and organizational level. Researchers

also might typically study of the availability of policies to support work and family, and

the degree to which organizational culture and managers provided a supportive culture

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and norms to facilitate use of policies as well as positive relationships between work and

home. For example, an individual would not have to sacrifice their family life in order to

get ahead at work.

Moving From Study of Work and Family To Study of Work and Life

Integration

The future directions of the work and family field are moving from the notion of

work and family balance and conflict to terms of growing acceptance of work and

nonwork life balance or work and life balance. Such terms suggest that many employees,

even those without dependents or visible forms of family related to caregiving can

experience the need to seek work and family balance. It also suggests as men become

more involved in caregiving and domestic roles and women more involved in work and

breadwinning roles, conflict and enrichment may more strongly relate to the role an

individual is enacting (e.g., caregiver or breadwinner) than gender.

Future Research Trends

Research on work-family balance is only likely to increase among organizational

scholars. One reason for heightened interest around the globe in work-family balance

today is changing workforce demographics. A general trend around the world is a

gradual but constant growth in the labor market participation of women. Using the U.S.

as an example, which has some of the highest rates, research by the Families and Work

Institute shows that 83% of all two-parent families with children under 18 have both

parents working at least part of this time. Another study by Cohen reports that half of all

children under 18 will live in a single parent home for at least part of their childhood in

the U.S.

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 Besides individuals with children, work-family balance concerns affect employees

in general. For example, research by the Families and Work Institute reports that one

third of employees say they have to choose between advancing in their jobs or

devoting attention to their family or personal lives and one third will have managed elder

care- care for a parent over the past year.

Another reason for growing interest relates technological transformations that

have resulted in some workplaces operating 24-7 as well as the ability to telework and be

constantly accessible to work and jobs by email and cell phone and pagers even when not

formally at the workplace. With 24-7 operations, the definition of the typical workday

and what work hours are normal to support work family balance are also likely to

redefined. For example, a U.S. based view of a 9-5 Eastern time zone of normal working

hours, may not provide balance for workers where it is the middle of the night in India or

China.

Future research on work family balance will focus on differences in cross-cultural

perceptions, how needs for balance shift over the life course, and how different jobs,

family structures, and demographic groups may vary in their access to, perceptions of and

outcomes from the level of work family balance they are afforded on and off the job.

Multi-level research integrating individual and organizational perspectives and measures,

and positive and negative measures is also likely to increase in future studies.

Job design and work and family rewards and resources are likely to become of

particularly increasingly importance in studying work family balance and conflict with

highest stresses at either end of the economic spectrum. Individuals in higher paid

managerial jobs are likely to experience higher work conflict and a lower balance due to

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overwork. There will be too many work hours competing for individual time and energy

and too high workloads.

Individuals at the lower end of the economic spectrum will experience work and

family conflict more likely due to a lack of flexibility and ability to control when one

works and a lack of economic resources to buy high quality child care and dependent

care. Thus, employees throughout the organizations hierarchy will experience lower

work-family balance but for different reasons. This trend makes it critical for future

research to not only measure conflict, but to assess the processes and reasons for conflict

and the role of organizational and job structures, as well as family and social and cultural

structures (such as how family responsibilities are shared or viewed as ought to be

shared) in enhancing or mitigating conflict and balance. The more that workers have

access to jobs enabling higher control how when and where they do their jobs and the

amount of workload, and the more that communities are design to provider greater public

and private supports to enable dual enactment in work and family roles, the more likely

that members of society will have greater work-life balance.

Ellen Ernst Kossek

See also gender division, sociology of paid work and employment, gendered

organizations

Further Readings and References

Bond, J., Thompson, C., Galinsky, E., & Prottas, D. (2003). Highlights of the 2002

national study of the changing workforce. NY Families and Work Institute.

Cohen, S. (2002). Cohabitation and the declining marriage premium for men. Work and

Occupations, 29,343-383..

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Ebaugh, H. (1988). Becoming an ex: The process of role exit. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Goode, W. (1960). A theory of role strain. American Sociological Review, 25, 483-496.

Greenhaus, G. & Powell. G. 2006. When work and family are allies: A theory of work-

family enrichment. Academy of Management Review, 31, 72-92.

Greenhaus, J. & Beutell, N. 1985. Sources of conflict between work and fmaly roles.

Academy of Management Review, 10: 76-88.

Hammer L.,Bauer T. Grandey A. (2003). Work-family conflict and work-related

withdrawal behaviors. Journal of Business and Psychology.17, 419-436.

Kanter, R. (1977). Work and family in the United States: A critical review for research

and policy. NY, NY: Russell Sage.

Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.

Kossek, E., Lautsch, B., Eaton, S. 2006. Telecommuting, control, and boundary

management: Correlates of policy use and practice, job control, and work-family

effectiveness. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68, 347-367.

Kossek, E. E. & Lambert, S. (2005). Work And Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural

and Psychological Perspectives. Mahwah, N.J.: LEA Press.

Kossek E. & Ozeki, C. (1998). Work-family conflict, policies and the job-life satisfaction

relationship: A review and directions for work-family research. Journal of Applied

Psychology.83: 139-149.fol

Pitt-Catsouphes, M., Kossek, E. & Sweet, S. (2006). The Work-Family Handbook:

Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives, Methods, and Approaches. Mahwah, N.J.: LEA Press.

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Seiber, S. (1974). Toward a theory of role accumulation. American Sociological Review,

39, 567-578

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